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by peasina



Series: Area 51 Husbands Podficlets [5]
Category: Independence Day (Movies), Silent Zone - Stephen Molstad
Genre: Community: podfic_bingo, Falling In Love, First Dates, Flowers, M/M, Podfic & Podficced Works, Podfic Length: 0-10 Minutes, Read by the Author, Stargazing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:29:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28430061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peasina/pseuds/peasina
Summary: Poetry is Brackish’s emotional release, a way of pouring pesky feelings to paper so they no longer distract from what’s important: work.Does he ever re-read them? Well, sometimes, though it’s rare. He’s a scientist, not a poet.
Relationships: Milton Isaacs/Brackish Okun
Series: Area 51 Husbands Podficlets [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1744486
Kudos: 2
Collections: Podfic Bingo, Voice Team 2020 Mystery Box: Team Sun, Voiceteam Mystery Box 2020





	Search for a Title

**Author's Note:**

> This was created as part of [Voice Team](https://voiceteam.dreamwidth.org/) Mystery Box. The challenge was to create a podfic backwards! [MistbornHero](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MistbornHero) created a cover and title first, then I wrote a fic inspired by that cover and recorded it :-)
> 
> This podfic also counts towards the 'Write and record your own story' square on my Podfic Bingo card.

  


Between notes, equations, and drawings in Brackish’s scientific journal, you’ll find the odd doggerel scribble. Every page or two are a few loose lines; perhaps even a couplet with a poor rhyme. (Kind of like that one.) Poetry is Brackish’s emotional release, a way of pouring pesky feelings to paper so they no longer distract from what’s important: work.

Does he ever re-read them? Well, sometimes, though it’s rare. He’s a scientist, not a poet.

Since being made Director, he hasn’t experienced much sorrow or loneliness, the typical motivation behind his poems. Yet, he’s still writing them. More than ever in fact. His journal is poetry > notes now. He’s painting, too. His watercolour pans are shrinking day by day. But this is about his writing…

Dr Isaacs’s office is crammed with potted orchids. Brackish writes a poem about them and doodles his best impression of one in the margin. He makes an excuse to return—a sore throat—so he can check the bloom’s detail. He returns to the poem also, adding flowers whenever his mind wanders. He titles this one, _Orchids_. It’s straightforward, like the good doctor when he’d stuck a tongue depressor into Brackish’s mouth and said he seemed perfectly fine.

Dr Isaacs lends Brackish a book from his personal collection: a mythology encyclopaedia. The pages are jammed with makeshift bookmarks of old receipts, magazine scraps, Polaroids, and a surprisingly good drawing of Asterix the Gaul. Paragraphs are highlighted in faded yellow. Lines and words are circled in pen. The margins house notes in Isaacs’s hand: doodles, reminders, references to other books. It’s more an encyclopaedia of Milton Isaacs than mythology. Brackish lifts some of those notes and highlights, and pieces together a found poem. He calls it, _Fragments_. This one is different, special. That’s why Isaacs gets to read it. It’s the first time Brackish shares his poetry with anyone.

Dr Isaacs is a stargazer. One night, Brackish follows him topside. Isaacs invites him to lay beside him on a sheet thrown across the airfield’s dusty tarmac. Lit by starlight, Brackish writes a poem about the way the starfield reflects from the other man’s hazel eyes. The air tastes of salt. Nevada’s heat clings to Brackish’s skin. This all goes in the poem. _Starry Nights_.

Brackish can’t concentrate. The readings from his last experiment were wrong—highly embarrassing when his lab assistant pointed that out. He’s forgetting to eat. He keeps ending up in Issacs’s office, forgetting his symptoms as soon as he walks through the door or why he’s even come at all.

He tries, really tries, to put everything he’s feeling into a poem.

The poem gets long.

Pages long.

He adds a line whenever the bewildering flood of… something compels him to write. The lines make little sense, don’t rhyme, are scrawled so quickly in the middle of the night Brackish can’t make sense of them come morning. He can’t stop adding to this poem, and it isn’t helping the way poetry used to. It isn’t helping him move on.

The only way to end this poem, is to add a title. It’ll feel complete with one of those. However, when he reads it back, he can’t find a common theme anywhere amongst dreamy, purple metaphors, rambling passages, sections of nonsense, illegible scribbles, erased then rewritten pencil, lists upon lists of adjectives, and sentences as long as this one.

It takes him bumping into Dr Isaacs outside his lab for the title to come to him, and when it does, it’s an epiphany.

Isaacs holds a single rose, and he’s tongue-tied, pulling at his shirt collar as he asks Brackish if he’d care to join him for dinner that night. No, Brackish, not in the canteen like usual. In the good doctor’s room; if that’s not too presumptuous. It’s a date. He’s asking you on one, and all the feelings that’ve plagued you for weeks and all the words in your untitled poem finally make sense.

Brackish says yes. He titles the poem, _Milton_.


End file.
